Rockhampton fire investigator Aaron Sands explains the challenging role

Ever wondered what life is like as a fire investigator in Rockhampton? We sat down with Aaron Sands to answer all of your burning questions.

Ever wondered what it’s like to be a fire investigator? Aaron Sands from North Rockhampton Fire and Rescue Station has sat down with The Morning Bulletin to tell us the good, the bad and the ugly.

Aaron Sands said being a fire investigator is not a glamorous job.

Mr Sands has been in the Queensland Fire Department for nearly 15 years and has risen through the ranks to the unique role of a fire investigator.

In this role, he has seen chaotic and messy work sites, challenging investigations and cases involving arson.

Mr Sands said that teamwork and providing closure to victims are some of his favourite aspects of the job.
“If we can determine an outcome for these fires and give someone a little bit of closure on the incident and what actually happened, that’s probably the favourite part,” he said.
On the flipside, he said that the working conditions can be hot, messy and sometimes disturbing.

“It’s not a glamorous job. It’s hot, it’s dirty, it’s stinky, there’s all sorts of hazardous things around,” he said.
“It’s the little things... a refrigerator that has lost its power and been through a fire, all the food goods have spilled out and are starting to spoil.”
Mr Sands also spoke about the difficulty of attending sites where a person or an animal has died.
“We do work with fatalities on fires, and that may even be someone’s pet, as well... nobody really likes to go to (these scenes) but it’s just part of it.”

When discussing some of the stranger things in his line of work, Mr Sands says the survivability of fish after a fire is surprising.
“We pull up all sorts of strange things through the ashes... the strangest, and I’d say most peculiar one is the survivability of fish,” he said.
“There will be this little fish swimming around in a tank and you think ‘wow, that little guy has just gone through absolute literal fire hell and he’s still kicking along’.”

Mr Sands also spoke about the role that arson plays in the life of a fire investigator.
“Unfortunately, arson is definitely a factor in our investigations,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say it’s common, but it’s definitely something that’s around.”

Mr Sands also spoke about a strange and difficult irony in the life of a fire investigator - sometimes their evidence is destroyed by fire and no longer exists when they arrive.
“The hardest part... is that our evidence is destroyed,” he said.
“We can get there with all the best intentions to have this fire solved, come up with the cause of termination, have a good outcome for everybody, but all our evidence might literally be burnt away.”

When arriving at job sites where evidence is burned and destroyed, fire investigators are observant and creative in their investigations.

“We’ll do a lot of scene investigation, we’ll look for fire patterns, for what we call fire indicants - they will show the direction of the fire,” Mr Sands said.

Fire investigators use atmospheric monitoring equipment to detect flammable substances like petrol or diesel at the site of a fire.
“Once we’ve established an area where we believe there may be ignitable liquids, we’ll then work with QPS,” Mr Sands said.
“They’ll take further scene sampling to further determine back at their lab what exactly was there, whether it may be petrol, diesel or anything like that.”